**PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A VIRTUAL PROGRAM THAT WILL TAKE PLACE VIA ZOOM. Registrants will receive a link to access the Zoom Webinar via email.**

Author Evan Friss will discuss his new bestselling book, The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore, an affectionate and engaging history of the American bookstore and its central place in American cultural life, from department stores to indies, from highbrow dealers trading in first editions to sidewalk vendors, and from chains to special-interest community destinations.

About The Book: Evan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin’s first bookstore in Philadelphia and takes us to a range of booksellers including the Strand, Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company, the Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus. The Bookshop is also a history of the leading figures in American bookselling, often impassioned eccentrics, and a history of how books have been marketed and sold over the course of more than two centuries.

About The Author: Evan Friss is a professor of history at James Madison University and the author of two other books: The Cycling City: Bicycles and Urban America in the 1890s and On Bicycles: A 200-Year History of Cycling in New York City. He lives with his wife (a bookseller) and two children (occasional booksellers) in Virginia.

Register directly on Zoom HERE. Presented in collaboration with the Ashland Library.

RECORDING NOTE: This program will be recorded. All registrants will receive the recording via email within 48 hours of the program.

ACCESSIBILITY NOTE: The Tewksbury Public Library does not discriminate on the basis of disability and is committed to providing a reasonable modification to participate in our events, services or documentation. Contact Director Diane Giarrusso at 978-640-4490 or dgiarrusso@tewksbury-ma.gov at least two weeks before an event to arrange for modification, or at any time you need accessible documents.